‘We finally love the skin we're in'

‘My cystic acne was so bad I had to have therapy’

- GILLIAN CRAWLEY & LEBBY EYRES

Amy Jamison, 23, a student from County Down, Northern Ireland, has suffered from acne from the age of 13. Amy’s pus-filled cysts usually take weeks to disappear and cause huge emotional distress, but she’s overjoyed to have finally found an effective treatment

As a teenager, I started suffering from spots just like all my friends at school, but pretty soon I realised that these weren’t normal pimples. By the time I was 15, I was battling huge, deep cysts that would appear on my face overnight and take weeks to disappear.

It was too hard to resist the temptation to squeeze the unsightly pus out, but that only made the problem worse and increased the risk of scarring.

My acne made me feel down and anxious. I’d imagine when people looked at me, they were just looking at my spots and not seeing the real me. Eventually, I developed body dysmorphia.

When I was 15, the doctor prescribed antibiotic cream Zineryt. It made a difference in the short term, but after a while the effectiveness wore off. Any treatment was the same – as soon as I finished a course of antibiotics, the cysts would return.

If I had a really bad breakout, I wouldn’t go to school and any invitation to a sleepover was a source of terror. I was worried about my friends seeing me without my make-up on and that my spots would burst in the night.

That happens a lot, unfortunately. The cysts can cause me a lot of pain during the night. If I turn over in my sleep, the chances are the pressure may cause a cyst to burst and when I wake up, the bed linen is soaked in pus. I’m always changing my sheets.